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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2009 06-29 Joint ACHDMeridian Citv Council Special Joint Meeting June 29. 2009 The Meridian City Council special meeting was called to order at 10 a.m. on Monday, June 29, 2009, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd. Members Present: Keith Bird, David Zaremba, Charlie Rountree and Brad Hoaglun. City Staff: Staff Present: Jaycee Holman, Brent Bjornson, Tom Barry, Anna Canning, Matt Ellsworth, Bill Nary. ACHD Commissioners Present: John Franden, Sherry Huber, Rebecca Arnold, Sara Baker, Carol McKee. ACHD Staff: J. Schweitzer, Steve Price, Sally Goodell, Mike Brokaw, Bruce Mills, Gary Inselman, Christy Little, Adam Zaragoza, Susan Slaughter. Roll-call Attendance: Roll call. X David Zaremba X Brad Hoaglun X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird X Mayor Tammy de Weerd Item 1. ACHD's Cost Share Policy: Goodell: Mayor and Council Members, Commissioners I am trying to run through this with a Power Point presentation - in the fall last year when we were going through kind of from joint meeting to joint meeting and the alliance meetings doing an overview, there were issues more pressing from your perspective, so this particular -the overview portion of this did not get put on a joint agenda, but I will try to go through it pretty quickly. Your staff has been looking at this for a long time. What I would like to do is stress the things that Caleb gave me, which is how the cost share would work in the project process and some specific questions that were in that memo. We started this exercise back in January or no July 24, 2008 when we provided the first draft to the local governments. The purpose of the interagency cost share policy is to set up a policy that is consistent with our statutory authorities. It is really striving to establish some equity among the cities. So what we provide from community to community is reasonably consistent. We have several recent projects that we use as a model for how to sort of structure this effort and it is important to emphasize that it primarily focuses on ACHD's projects -those projects that we are going to construct. It is an entirely different scenario when you have developers building. Generally what the cost sharing policy does is it breaks the world up into transportation components and non transportation components for a road project. ACHD is responsible for roadway, for basic bike lanes, basic pedestrian zones and safety medians and I will talk about what that basic pedestrian zone is in a minute in a little more detail. The city or county would be responsible for landscaping installation, maintenance, enhanced bicycle and pedestrian facilities that you might seek because of the special land or unique land use situation, aesthetic treatments in medians or other aesthetic amenities. The basic pedestrian facility that ACRD would provide would be a two and one half foot hardscaped pedestrian (inaudible) outside the curb and then a five foot sidewalk. That can be configured in any variety of ways, but in all cases we would provide that. Or, if the city is interested in installing landscape, ACHD has offered to purchase up to six feet of right of way for the buffer. So, ACHD would purchase that extra 3'/z feet and then install the 5 foot sidewalk behind that and the thing that ACHD is seeking is for the partner, city or county or whatever the circumstances is to both install landscape and very important to maintain it because that is not sort of within our area of expertise if you will. I know the City of Meridian does a lot with development in terms of where to set the sidewalks and how to create setbacks and we can certainly work with you all around that in terms of what your specific interests are in any particular road. We did take look at landscaping and hardscaping and what the costs typically are for kind of a full treatment if you will - we use the Meridian Split Corridor - we used the Hill Road extension and we looked at I think it was Five Mile, Ustick to Linder where we have done -excuse me, Five Mile (inaudible) where we have done a little bit of estimating and if you do kind of a full treatment for a mile and that includes signage and lighting and landscaping and whatnot it could go up to about $650,000 a mile. In order to talk about how this works in the project process I just want to introduce a little bit of language in the way that we use it -projects start out in the planning phase in our capital improvement plan, in the five year work plan or through community planning programs or other sources. Most projects go into the five year work plan before we start working on them. While they are in the five year work plan, we go out and do scoping and scoping is a point where we just take a hard look at the project and try and define what is this project really going to look like, what is it going to be and come up with a cost estimate. A lot of times we have to establish assumptions that is based just on existing information and those assumptions change when we get into design. That sculpting sets the base line from which we start to evaluate as we go forward. The next step we take is now concept design. Concept design may be a separate phase of the project for complex projects or we may just have a design step that gives them concept design. Either way concept design is where the opportunity is to really look at what it is that the city or other entities are interested in and factor them into a project already in that effort. Once that is all settled and I will talk a little bit more about our relationship there, we move into the design process, wrap up design, acquire right of way, go through the construction phase and close out the project. So coming back to those steps and talking a little bit more about the cities' opportunities to be a little bit more engaged in that. During the five year work plan and now that we sort of reorganized the capital improvements citizens advisory committee, you now have two representatives on that and one of them is your City Planning Director or designee and the other one is a local citizen that you recommended. They will be the one involved in the five year work plan on a routine basis. So you should have staff who are well aware of where we are with this project and how they are coming through the cue. We are really hoping that will be a real improvement in communication. (Inaudible) a fine job of coordinating, but this gives a better opportunity. When a project is in the five year work plan and at a certain point it hits our budget year and that is when we start work on it. We actually, though, we start work before the budget year, the immediately proceeding year and that is when we do project initiation. At that point, that is the point when we will be contacting the project manager who is assigned to the project and will be getting in touch with the city to talk about appropriate participation and whether or not the city has interest in additional features beyond the basic road that we would build. This should happen, in my best of all possible worlds will happen during the project initiation process before the dollars have even hit the budget process because we need to know how to work together. Participation can vary pretty widely. On big projects you have staff that actually sit on our project team. Both Matt and Caleb are part of participating on project teams. But on smaller projects that probably is not a great use of staff time - if it is just a little bridge replacement or filling in a sidewalk gap, you know that - we will figure out what is appropriate way to communicate about what is proposed and make sure your staff has plenty of opportunity to give your input and review plans and all of those things, but they may not find it a good use of time to sit on a project team. The expression of interest in additional features is really an opportunity to say this is a place where we know we want to have additional sidewalk. Maybe it is a downtown and your plan calls fora 12 foot deep sidewalk -you know in an intense pedestrian area. Or perhaps you are in a gateway and your plan calls for special treatments at a gateway, this is the opportunity to really talk about that. There are others which I will talk about as we go on. We will initiate concept design and the first thing that we will do is negotiate a plan for design. Now that could be our in house design or could be a consultant design. If the city has specific features that they are interested in having built into the design, we want you to have the input on the plan for doing that work. A lot of that is frequently done during concept design and in that phase that is where we have the opportunity to really look at options. So it might be that you think you want -you are not sure if you want to do a six foot or an eight foot buffer for example. During that concept phase we can look at that and we can look at what the relative costs are and look at things like what are the impacts to the adjacent property. If it turns out that a bigger buffer means a whole lot of having to buy up a bunch of houses that is probably not something that either we or you would be interesting in doing. It is during the concept phase that we sort through that together and determine what the configuration of the project should be. So that is the identifying and evaluating alternatives. We also come up with concept level cost estimates which is a key part for everybody making a decision as to what the features are that they are interested in and our objective is for the city and ACHD to concur on the preferred alternative at the close of the concept phase. Again, that might be a separate phase that has got its own contract or whatever or it might just be the beginning of the design exercise, but we (inaudible) to agree on what that should like is what we are trying to accomplish. At that point, if the city has specific requests that would be city funded under the interagency cost share policy this is when we would develop an interagency agreement to determine what that is, what the project is we are going to adopt, who is responsible for what? We lay that out in this interagency agreement. I think I have got a note to this affect elsewhere, but just in case - to make sure I don't forget, we are in the process of - we have done a couple of agreements of this nature before the cost share policy is adopted. Ri~ht now we are working on an interagency agreement with the City of Boise for 36 Street and that will serve as our initial model and from that we will try to generalize it and create kind of a model agreement that everybody could look at and go back and forth and discuss a little bit. But our goal is to really get that agreement settled at the end of concept design so that we are designing the right thing. It becomes expensive if we have to redesign or if we go out and buy right of way and it turns out no, never mind we don't want to do that, the purpose here is to make an effective investment. During the design phase the city would be responsible for the design of non transportation elements -what landscaping or special land that you were interested in? The cost would be yours, but so would the design decisions. You would make the decisions as we go through the process about what it is you want. We have had more than one configuration on this kind of an exercise; sometimes we have had a consultant for the roadway project who has the capacity or subs who have the capacity to do the design for the non -like landscaping. Other times we work with cities where they actually have their own separate consultant or their Parks Department does the design for that element. And that is either configuration; whatever makes sense for the project is how we would set that up. Then of course the city would use the comments on both our plan which is a routine plan of what we do as well as obviously having the major design decision role with respect to those elements with the city. During the right of way, ACHD would acquire the right of way - if there is additional right of way involved it would presumably be involved with city financial assistance and some of the questions that you all asked about that, they will come up a little bit later. I will actually ask our legal folks for comment. During construction, again it can work a couple of ways. The city -make it that ACHD bids. the transportation elements and the city bids the other elements separately. That might make sense with landscaping. The good part of that configuration is that you have full control over your pieces, but we also have had quite a lot of success in the past with jointly working on projects particularly when utilities are involved. So, a single bid that has city elements and ACHD elements with the city reimbursing ACHD for those portions is feasible too. We have projects configured that way. We try to think that through based on what makes most sense for the project. It isn't in our view, important for the city to inspect and improve their own project elements so that under either configuration you are getting what you want and making sure that you are satisfied. We are working on a model agreement based on the (inaudible) street. It has got to specify the assumptions based on the concept design. That is what the model interagency agreement would do -- here is what we agreed to build and here is the cost estimates for what we are doing. But at this point we just have cost (inaudible) level cost estimates. We don't have full design estimates with any changes. So we are describing in that agreement some sense of how to work through the design process so that if the costs change how do we work together so that we can jointly make decisions and how do we make sure that you all have the ability to control your costs? Because it is not like we are going to go out and design something and come back and tell you oh, there is a whole lot more money than we thought and what are the appropriate remedies through that process? Again, we try to accommodate development requires to achieve some of the features and this interagency agreement will address design, right of way and construction phases -- all three. Originally (inaudible) suggested that I go through (inaudible) as an example (inaudible) kind of from beginning to end. I thought it just made more sense because sometimes you look at projects and they have too many features that are just unique to the project. So I thought it would be better to do that overview and then talk a little bit about a couple of examples where you can see a little bit how it is working and how the give and take works for the individual projects. In this particular case, ACHD has started the design based on a set of assumptions about what the project was going to look like and the city came to us and said we are really interested at looking at revamping the land use in the area of several blocks either way. We would like a full charrette process. So we joined with them. They led the charrette process to do an area of specific land use plan, but ACHD served as a partner in that and we funded the transportation component and out of that they came out with a different concept for what they wanted to see on the 30~h Street extension. It had more features in terms of a landscape median -atone point the landscape median was very big, like 49 feet wide, but eventually as they worked through it they got down to something more typical and they were trying to get it to fit in, you know, they have got that Simplot park going in on the river that is going to have an actual park and then the whitewater park. We are trying to see how do we get the road, how do we get the pedestrian crossings to all fit together with the park? Eventually what they decided is that they were interested in having a roundabout at the park entrance and we took a look at it and it didn't warrant -actually it didn't warrant asignal - the traffic that was projected -- but normally in the past on a major park, we have put signals at the entrance. So what we did was we worked out an arrangement where the city is donating right of way and they will be paying us a little bit for some of the incremental cost for doing the roundabout over the signal. So we said the signal would be our baseline cost and they wanted the roundabout, so they are contributing - of course they own property along the edge so they have the ability to contribute right of way in this particular location that is helpful to us. So, you know, we kind of just balanced those kinds of things through a detailed discussion during concept design process -the city is also interested in having landscaping in the median and they will be installing it and maintaining it at the city's expense. It will be matched up with their park so that they get the fit and feel that they are primarily interested in. So we are just now wrapping up the interagency - or putting together a detailed draft of the interagency agreement on this particular project. But, I wanted to give that as an example so that when we get into the details and specifics of a project, we just give and take and figure out what is a way to achieve the objectives without - with a fair distribution of financial responsibility. The other thing that happened on this project which was really good and it was our first concept where it happened, we really have kind of had some different visions about what we should be doing in the roundabout and we went off at the staff level and put a bunch of information together and let them look at it and we sorted back and forth and at the end, the city voted unanimously that they wanted the configuration that we thought was a good configuration too. So at the end of the day, we both approved the same concept and had a good project to go forward with and everybody was happy with the plan. In the case of Five Mile, Fairview to Ustick, the city wants to have a landscape buffer. Now, we don't have an interagency agreement on this. We did the concept design. We really wrapped it up about 18 months ago, I think and they really wanted the cost share discussion to reach a little more advanced stage before we looked at an interagency agreement. So in this particular case we adopted a concept that said if there is a cost share agreement, this is what we will build and if the city decides not to cost share and that they are not interested in doing that then this is what we will build. So we had two options. They do at this point think that they want a landscaped buffer and consistent with the policy that I described earlier ACHD offered to buy right of way up to six feet for that buffer. They took a look at the situation and they proposed that they put four feet of buffer with like shrubs on one side and eight feet of buffer on the other side to accommodate trees. So they would have street trees on one side. And as far as we can see that is going to be a fine arrangement if they choose to go ahead with that. So, again I just wanted to give you an example that it is a give and take discussion in the context of the individual projects. Moving onto your specific questions that were captured in the email. What would be constructed if the city doesn't participate in cost sharing? I kind of went through this -whatever the curb to curb condition is as proposed to the livable street design guidelines. The decision about a median verses a tum lane will be for safety purposes will just be based on traffic engineering principles. We will have a five foot bike lane that does not include the curb and gutter, so it is 5 feet of flat space and again, 2 'h feet of buffer space, 5 feet of sidewalk and some of these things vary in response to site specific conditions. The one that comes to mind is the Ustick project there in front of an elementary school (inaudible) because you have such heavy pedestrian use. That would presumably be something that ACHD would choose to do, but I think it is 6 or 7 feet -within our normal range of activities. De Weerd: Is there flexibility on - in light of all of the issues and conflicts between motorists and bicyclists and is the debate of the moment. If the city were to look at widening sidewalks to have pedestrians and bicyclists off street, would there be flexibility to take that 5 foot bike lane and add it to a sidewalk design - we are not talking about that one necessarily, but is that possible? I just got back from the Netherlands and they don't have those kind of conflicts because the bikes are not on the same road. They are on a different facility and how would that work? Goodell: Mayor there certainly is altematives that we can look at and in some scenarios - I am thinking of -this might not be a great one, but the 36~h Street extension that goes under the hills in Boise -one of the proposals is to put a 10 foot shared use pathway on one side. It is partly because of the constrained environment, but those are certainly altematives. We just put in a shared use pathway on Emerald for a couple of blocks tying a couple pieces of sidewalks together as an extended curb and as our shared use space outside of that curb. We did the same thing Helm Road. We are careful how (inaudible) because commuter type bicyclists use the road anyway. They just prefer that and so we try to make sure from an engineering standpoint that we are putting together something that protects their safety as well or provides an alternative if there is an alternative location they can go, but we can work through those types of questions in any specific project, absolutely. De Weerd: We have a master bike plan that we also worked with your staff and I know that you are coming out with yours or you have and so are those in concert with each other'? Goodell: My understanding is they are. The staff went through them carefully, did they not? Canning: Yeah. Madame Mayor, Council Members and Commissioners we met with Justin Lucas on Friday and went through in detail and we are going to get back to him on the multi-use pathways - we are going to just look at our GIS later and get that to them so they can incorporate that into their map. So we are working on that issue specifically. Goodell: One of the things - on May 27w the Commissioners adopted a livable street design guide, the cost share policy and the complete street policy. There is another piece to this puzzle, which is the topology and the associated information and we went through the whole process of working with all of the cities and their staff to determine what you want each street to look like in your future. We are working to get that adopted this fall and we are going through a series of workshops with your cities to put together what we are calling a master street map that will capture not only -you know when we say this is going to be a residential arterial or a residential collector, okay, well specifically what do we want that to look like. Does it have -are there any special features that you know at this time. Are there any special conditions that we are aware of? With the goal of being able to design what the right of way footprint would be so we would be acquiring the right of way for the right thing and that is the workshop that Anna was referring to. I wanted to call your attention to something at the end -that have pictures of typologies and we use these in the public information, we use this frame and make it just a little bit helpful. The first image shows you what a 5 foot lane road with 11 foot lanes, a bicycle lane, (inaudible) with curb and gutter with the buffer and the sidewalk would look like and that is the basic section that ACHD would construct. If you go to the next page, it shows you what might be possible in the scenario where the city indicates the designer to landscaping in the buffer strip and ACHD acquires the additional right of way (inaudible) with a 6 foot buffer strip. The third page still has the 6 foot buffer strip, but it also has a (inaudible) landscape median in the tum lane and this is closer to kind of a full (inaudible) treatment. It could be more to it. It could be that you want to have 10 foot buffers. It could be that you are in the downtown and you wanted to have 10 foot deep sidewalks because of high pedestrian use. This is to just give you a little bit of a sense. This would be a scenario where there would be a little more substantial partnership. Moving on. Anything else on this at this point? McKee: Any questions? (Unknown Speaker): Sally on the full TLIP section street section -there is a couple things that are different and one is the parking - Goodell: Oh, I missed -yes. (Unknown Speaker): In that scenario, who would be responsible for that 7 Yz feet? Goodell: When the road is an arterial, ACHD would be responsible for the right of way for the parking, but when a road is a collector or a local road is almost always the developer -most of the work or some other entity, but we concluded in dialogue with the Commissioners that if it is an arterial ACHD would take responsibility for that, however the presence of parking lot arterials is pretty limited because of the tendency to really impair or reduce capacity and safety issues. The kind of place you would see an arterial is downtown or something like that. How would the cost share policy be applied in the city's area of impact but not yet annexed into the city? We would consult the city on those portions that would be part of your city in the long haul in terms of what your interests are. The county has indicated that they don't have any interest in pursuing the "TLIPing" if you will; but if another entity came in and was proposing something or if you all wanted to propose something that you knew was going to be a part of the city eventually we would consult you and work with you on that configuration. Did that answer the question? I hope. Rountree: I guess my question, Sally, would be you have indicated you would consult with the city, but that results in two other questions -you will consult, but would you follow through with the recommendation from the city and if you did what portion would the city be responsible fog? Right now if you look at the second bullet point that is exactly what we get when we provide input to the county about things that are going on in the county. They have no interest in what the city says. Goodell: Sure. I understand and I can see how the way I responded to that could raise that question. The participating agents, whoever makes that request we would work with them to set up a partnership agreement and if the city wanted "x" we would work with you through the rest of the cost share policy to set up an agreement that tries to achieve what your objectives are. If the county did resistance of some - I am having a little bit of trouble thinking of a reason why they would, but if they resisted we would try to work it out. Huber: Well, I think the flip side of why this is really important and it will be tricky because if we follow the policy through and you would be paying for some portion of that and you are not annexed yet, but the shocker and why that gets in my mind tricky is I sat in a meeting and listened to a particular city say they might not annex a piece of this county that they have even bought part ground in and so you see where we are caught. So whether or not - I am not saying which city, but I mean it was a shocker because it was out of the blue. It was assumed they were going to and they come up against the wall and annexation where there was a lot of people grumping. Maybe in the end they are going to still annex it, I don't know, but all of sudden it was like gosh that never crossed our mind. So that is where it is hard for us and it will be hard. Rountree: Well, I would hope you wouldn't get a request if that was the case. Huber: Well, you see what I am saying and that is this is an area that was kind of a done deal I thought and then I heard the Mayor say something different. McKee: Well, in this particular area we have gone through a transportation and land use study with them, so yes money has been expended already. So it is now a new question in our mind when a city says yes we will annex this portion and actually having them do it or not do it. We can't force annexation, but we have been spending money in areas that are not yet annexed, but at the benefit of the city who is doing the annexing. Huber: And we have always followed whatever they wanted. (Speaker unknown): Madame President, the issue here is I think a little bit different than Boise. Let's just say it is probably Boise that you guys are talking about. If it s a TLIP project and say the City of Meridian wants to do it in there area of impact and you want more than just the basic TLIP, which ACHD pays for the basic TLIP, the 2 YZ buffer with the stamped concrete perhaps and the 5 foot sidewalk and you want something different in your area of impact, it is my understanding and correct me on this Sally, you would pay for those additional amenities for let's say if you wanted a 6 foot landscaping then you would pay for the landscaping and to maintain it. So I don't see a situation where there is ever going to be - I mean the only thing that you will have to answer to is your constituents if you say yeah we are going to do this -but that is your decision. It would not be our decision. We would give you the basic TLIP otherwise, right? (Speaker unknown): Or you would just wait on the project until you decide if you want to annex then great. If you don't the options are there. Obviously you are not going to spend money in an area that you haven't annexed. I can't imagine. Huber: I don't know - if that has happened already. Rountree: I guess I have a question about the TLIP, Madame Chair. All I have seen and I probably have not paid attention, but all I have seen is typical sections or typologies that relate to urban environment and there may be some work to be done on those areas that never will be annexed into a city in terms of rural sections. Your costs are going to be significantly less. Goodell: You are absolutely correct that the livable street design guide focuses for the most part on urbanized environments and that was based on the notion that -probably partly just one bite of the elephant at a time, but also the notion that the heavy pedestrian and bicycle use which so much of this emphasizes the alternative transportations is primarily in those urbanized areas. We do have a configuration for rural roads that includes a substantial safety shoulder, for example, that you have reasonable safe space for bicycles. But if there is more to do on an individual project than thinking to do we can certainly do that and I guess if that led to another generation of the level of street design guide that addressed another scenario that would be fine. De Weerd: I guess I am going back to Charlie's question and what I don't think has been answered because of some of the scenarios that are going on out there. If the city staff works with your staff to look at some of these enter corridors - we think they are enter corridors to what our areas of impact are and we set an expectation for that design with the associated commitment whatever would happen on our side, what if another city comes in and takes a chunk out of there that could possibly upset the overall design of that roadway? Should you not make a requirement of that arterial that it looks that way so you are not dissecting it so that one portion looks this way and another portion looks that way and then you are back to the original intent. How do you protect the integrity of that transportation corridor? Huber: So how do you make the city pay for the consistency, whoever doesn't want to do it? I think that that is really the question. McKee: And I think at that point we would have to revert back to the basic roadway that the ACHD pays for on its own. Huber: I can certainly see what you are talking about and I think this is going to have to be something that is a case by case because all of sudden we design something, say for Meridian and we think it is a done deal and then all of sudden some other city comes in and says Hope, we are going to take that and then they want an entirely different roadway. Well, who picks up the cost of that? Speaker unknown: Won't that whole issue sort of be resolved if you go to the county with your impact of area --? I mean there are legal avenues you could take in that situation. I mean you could preemptively annex or work with the - have you gone to the county within the last six months on this? De Weerd: Yes. McKee: Sally right now do we have any projects that are looming towards this problem? Goodell: Well, because anything -most of what is imminent is already designed in terms of constructing in the next couple three years. There may be some that there is a question about going forward and we would try to work that through design. I will try to go back and take a look at the list and think about it a little bit. But we can sure take that into consideration. As a hypothetical we did as a result of the comments that we received from a lot of the cities (inaudible) case by case consideration because there are often unique considerations and the Commission wanted the option to really look at that on a case by case. De Weerd: I guess for just a closing comment on that we worked with ACHD, our staffs, with the land use and the transportation component in our planning of our south Meridian area. Money has been expended, plans have been adopted to those expectations of design, so I guess that cautionary when that change is made as we contemplated the adequate public facilities and when changes are made that cost we don't want to incur. The cost of that change needs to be passed on and that expectation needs to be clear. McKee: Yes, we are well aware of that. Goodell: You know I think that is fairly consistent with the language in the cost share policy. I will have to go back but if for some an entity came in and requested something different when we are already well into a process, the redesign would be at their expense. Of course we would go have a dialogue with the entities and try and sort it out. De Weerd: So all of the upstream, downstream effects would be passed on -the cost of changing? Goodell: Upstream and downstream effects is getting into a little bit different area. De Weerd: That is our bottom line. Goodell: (Inaudible) wasn't designed to try and answer that. That is a larger question and cost share policy is really just trying to say within the streetscape that we are designing and constructing, how do the two entities work together? The question of downstream impacts from one community to another really is, I guess, a part of a dialogue blueprint (inaudible). The question was and this was embedded in another question, but I will address it directly. Is the city participation and expenditure in the right of way limited to landscaping? No. I mean if the city has other interests or things that they would like to do, we are certainly open to whatever we can work out that is safe. We will have concerns around, for example, if you are putting them in a median - we will need to look at site distance questions and safety for vehicles and whatnot, but particularly if we get the ideas on the table during concept design that really maximizes our opportunity to be flexible and to work into a particular project or whatever the city or stakeholder is interested in seeing. So we just want to emphasize that. It becomes expensive when we have already started the design process and we have to step back and redesign or if we have already started buying right of way and we have to go back. This is where I am going to ask our legal counsel to address some of the questions. You have a couple related to the nature of our authorities. Price: Steve Price, ACHD general counsel. This issue of state statutes and limitation of ACHD's authority on spending and the right of ways have been on ongoing issue throughout the development of cost share policy and I think probably the best way is to kind of give a summary for you that ACRD didn't develop this interpretation without doing extensive research. We have looked at it a long time and in fact we first came to this issue back in 1980 in a case - it was an Ada County case, the Ada County Highway District verses Boise Water. This case involved and issue of ACHD's authority under state statute and there are a bunch of old cases in Idaho that relate to the specific authority of Highway Districts and their purpose. I think that if you hear some of the language decided in the case - I hate to do that to you, but I think it will help you understand better than me explaining it. I have tried to explain it several times, but there continues to be confusion. So I thought maybe the best way to do it was just read what this decision was and it would help. It says cities and counties have both public - another way to think about before I start is that cities have the ability to carry guns, they have police power. ACHD doesn't have police power. We don't have any guns. There is a clear distinction in terms of how power is delegated out of the constitution and by the legislature of those two entities. Highway District's arm is created by the constitution, cities and counties are and it is that power difference that is where we are today and the legislature when they delegate powers, they delegate as a limitation, not as a general grant. The constitution as they delegate powers to cities and counties is a general grant of power. It is much different. So let me kind of start off by saying cities and counties have both a public government mental role and also they have a quasi private or proprietary role providing services for the special advantages of urban communities in their business capacity. It is (inaudible) role verses legislative control. On the other hand, Highway District's Idaho have ordinarily been regarded as quasi municipal corporations; highway districts as intended by highway district law cannot be said to correspond identically with other public corporations or county corporations or cities, towns or villages. They are quasi municipal corporations, not political municipalities, not created for purpose of government, but for a special purpose namely that of improving the highways within the district. The power of highway districts has been said to be limited to the construction, maintenance, repairs and improvement of all highways within the district. A highway district in Idaho is not a political municipality created -and these are cases by the way -for governmental purposes, but its powers are specifically limited to construction of highways for the benefit of its inhabitants. There are several cases that basically continue with the same concept that a highway district has limited special powers and it is only for the purpose of constructing, repairing and maintaining highways. That case law is consistent when you interpret it our title creation of a single county highway district and when you get into the section where it says what is the highway districts powers of the cities and that is in 40-1450, it says the responsibilities of the single county highway district within cities and they have a subsection and it talks about -and it specifically identifies what ACHD's role is for constructing highways within cities and it is very specific. The one thing that we have interpreted that gives us some flexibility to spend money in the public right of way is when it relates to traffic and safety engineering for both motors and pedestrian traffic and so if we have some design issue where we could determine that the expenditure monies would enhance safety, like a buffer zone or in some cases it will be landscaping, or traffic engineering department said some landscaping on a round a bout will help slow down traffic then there will be a case for that, but if we can establish from an engineering perspective that that design could in the future will enhance safety then we will stretch the statute to grab that. But when they developed our statute, they have a reservation of authority for what cities can spend - if we have the general supervisory control, the general jurisdiction over an exclusive jurisdiction over the public right of way, then one would think that nobody else could get in there, but what this legislature did is they had an express reservation that says within the limits of any city, the city may expend funds for the placement, care or removal of trees, grass, shrubs or other plants that are located within the right of way of any highway that is within the highway district and so what that is doing is it is a further limitation of ACHD's authority by saying, you may have exclusive jurisdiction over public right of way, but we are pulling a piece out for the cities and when you look at the legislation you will see what they wanted is that they didn't want a highway district to be able to go out there and control what the aesthetic features or vision of each community is. It is kind of like they don't want ACHD to carry guns around either. They wanted the city to have a reservation to be able to control within their city what their city will look like. Kuna will probably want to look different from Meridian and it gives the city the ability to have control of the destiny of aesthetic look of their city. There is another section that deals with that and that is within -this is within the county and that is 40-1406 and within the county they have the same reservation. So you have the city statute and county statute and it says within the limits of any city, again, this is the same exact language that is in there. So within our statute, they put it in two different spots. Now some people have said well how does that interact with the 40-1312 and that is that this relates back to the general highway district statute, where we also have the same powers within that. It says the grant of powers provided in this chapter of highway districts and their agents shall be liberally construed as a broad and general grant of powers -- that is great so far - to the end that the control and the administration of the districts may be official. So it says that the broad powers to be in terms of implied powers that we shouldn't interpret that, only for the efficient control of the administration of the district. The enumeration of certain powers that would be implied without enumeration shall not be construed as the design (inaudible) solution of other implied powers necessary for free and efficient exercise of powers expressed in granting. So although you can walk the fine interpretation if you - as a lawyer if you have any intellectual integrity -after lots of training and lots of reading of the statutes, we have had several lawyers look at this and as we have gone through that I have just given you a brief summary from an analysis standpoint as to how we got there -now if the Commission doesn't like the legal advice they could mostly ignore it, but as a community, though, the other option is to go to the legislature to pass a law that would change that specifically or to clarify it. Now I don't know whether that has answered your question, but I tried to do it in kind of summary form, so if you have any questions I would be happy to stand for those. McKee: Yeah, let's open it up to questions and maybe Steve can answer them in lay person's terms. De Weerd: Steve how does all of that apply in a situation where you need the connectivity for the safety aspect and right of way purchases and putting in sidewalks? Where does that leave the ability to do that when that development or that annexation is not coming in, it would be on county land and do you have latecomer's agreements that you do in those cases that if you put in infrastructure that typically is a part of annexation and urbanization of an area, can you do something like that? Price: Madame President, Mayor De Weerd that is a very good question and the concept is that obviously if we are going to have a project that is in there that we can show there is some sort of pedestrian safety, that we can prove our future (inaudible), the streets map and that we can preserve corridor through that, we can show that as a public necessity that is something as part of the community vision. And that is part of the reason why we are going through the blueprint TLIP processes to create a future map, which is a land use authority that when those parcels come up that we have them identified on a map that we can see opportunity to work with the landowner to acquire right of way for those features. The second thing that this does is that if these design features, if the city wants something that is outside what we believe is our statutory authority (inaudible) that creates a power that creates an imminent domain issue as to who has the power to exercise imminent domain for that feature. We think we could resolve that though through this map, this corridor preservation map and we could negotiate the purchase of that with the landowner. But again, in terms of what ACHD can exercise its authority for are only those designs that we can show is within our power that is a public necessity. Anything outside that then the city can do through the development process as far as action for the development. Now in terms of latecomer agreements, we are moving towards latecomer agreements through our extraordinary impact fee arrangement and we will be coming to you in the near future with the concept of extraordinary impact fees and latecomer and the idea there is that anybody that gets the benefit within and we can create an overlay district, anybody that would get the benefit of those improvements that they are going to utilize those improvements that we could charge an extraordinary impact fee to the people as that land develops and with that we would pay the developer back that puts in those improvements and as a form of a latecomer agreement. This is something (inaudible) two communities in Washington and Oregon -studied that and put together programs based upon that. Did that answer your question? De Weerd: I think so. I will have to process it. Price: Well, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me. McKee: Are there any other questions? Sara? Baker: Steve what was the case that you cited at the very beginning of your spiel there? Price: Ada County Highway District verses Boise (inaudible) Corporation. It is just a district court opinion and I would be happy to get you a copy of that. It is 1980 decision. Baker: The other thing is and obviously this is before your time, but what rationale did the ACHD use to put landscaping on Curtis Road? It was installed by the district but maintained by the City of Boise. Price: I don't believe that there was any analysis done. Baker: If you want to know the poster child for a whole list of things to not do over again, it is Curtis Road might be it. Price: But your point is is that we have done projects in the past where the district has paid for landscaping and as policy the city has maintained it thereof. Baker: But not the maintenance. The maintenance has never been done by the district. Price: There is no question that we have a history of that. Baker: Except where weeds grew up in the sidewalk cracks. That is the district's responsibility to maintain those. Like Federal Way, we just had an issue with Federal Way having a huge bunch of weeds grow up in the cracks. Price: That is partially true and there are other cases where the adjacent landowner is also responsible. Franden: Residential districts it is usually the homeowner's association. Baker: Federal Way is an interesting issue. (Inaudible discussion) McKee: Okay, any other questions for Steve? Goodell: I am fairly confident he answered this question -the question of exercised imminent domain powers and of course that ties back to the footprint (inaudible) street map which is what would be adopted by you, we hope, in your future acquisitions. The last question was how flexible of a timelines outline the policy for city participation? I think this may have come from a particular point, but during project development, all of that will be scheduled within the five year work plan and there is lots of opportunity to work through the issue as long as we get involved early and keep ourselves on a reasonable schedule. I don't think that is probably the hard part or the place that maybe triggered this question, but just to be specific, I guess, during that process hopefully we are working through the terms of what we think our cost share agreements should look like during the concept design exercise so that -and hopefully we are working with a model agency agreement that we have kind of settled the terms. It will take a few iterations for us to get there, but that is our objective so the general terms are settled and then there would be a period after concept where we would make sure that we had a cost share agreement that both parties agree to. I think the question might have come from issues related to early right of way acquisition and when the city is interested in a particular set of features that entail cost share and we are talking about - we have the opportunity to acquire right of way development say that would incorporate both our property and property that the city was interested in. If the city was not prepared to -there is a window of time statutorily where we have the opportunity to acquire that right of way during development. If the city was interested in participating, we would move forward to do that and we may want to look at exactly what that would entail; however, Steve, correct me if I am wrong, I think we have 30 days to notify the property owner - is it 60 and then we go to negotiate an agreement? Total of 60 days. It is relatively quick and it is defined by something that is outside of our control. If that was just too quick and the city doesn't necessarily have the resources or whatever to participate at that time, that doesn't preclude doing it. Working through this as the project itself comes to life, as long as the city does not approve a development that puts a building in the place where you would actually like to have something else, say one half of a buffer or something, which is well within your control then when we get to the project design phase, as long as there is adequate setbacks, we can come back in and deal with acquisition at a later time when we actually have the design footprint done on normal right of way process. So, I just wanted to make sure it does refer to that early right of way acquisition with a fairly short timeline, but if we work together to configure the situation appropriately, that shouldn't be a failure to accomplish the city's interest in it. McKee: Are there any questions about that? Baker: The previously slide, did you go over that one? Goodell: Yes, Steve did. He talked about that. Baker: The imminent domain? Goodell: Yes, that was the whole compass of adopting a footprint into the master street map and future land acquisitions for the city. Zaremba: You have used a couple of examples - 30th and Ustick Five Mile. In the process with the split corridor phase 1 and I am thinking specifically of the area of Main Street between Corporate and Franklin there has been a lot of input from our Parks Department, probably our Arts Commission and certainly our Public Works and our Planning Department and stuff. It seems to me that that process even though it happened before formalizing this pretty well followed what you are telling here. Is there anything that you can think of in the split corridor phase 1 on Main Street that would alert you that is not going to work the way this is or this isn't going to work that happened is what I mean? Goodell: For the most part, no. I do and really all I had an opportunity to see are some notes from Meridian Development Corporation meetings, minutes or whatever and apparently there was some uncertainty of who was responsible for inspecting the landscaping work and I attribute that to respective - if it was not addressed in an interagency agreement, which it should have been that was probably because we haven't ripened to the point of exactly what it was that we needed to be clear about. We do think it is important for the city to inspect and approve those elements that are there and were their responsibility and have the power to do that. That is one area I am aware of and those are things that we will try to work out as we develop a model interagency agreement. I think there are others that I might not be aware of. We would really appreciate having those called to our attention we could work through them. McKee: Any other questions so far? Rountree: Madame President a comment and two cautions. Having seen this and having worked with your staff on the master street plan and our staff, I am really pleased at the flexibility that you incorporated in this process. I think when we first heard about it, we all went oh well what are they doing to us next? But, just suggest, if it isn't and make sure it is emphasized in the preamble or at least in the background information on the policy so it doesn't -the policy doesn't become dictatorially. I think that we all agree that every transportation project, even though we think they are all the same, they are all different and they have different turns and twists in it and you have to be able to sit down, negotiate, give and take and I think what you have done is great. The cautions I have with respect to the process, Sally indicated that in design and construction there was some mix and match possibilities of the city doing this and the Highway District doing that with design and the same thing with construction. I would caution to get away from that model. What you do is you set you in conflict with the people that you have hired to do the work because they can come with extra costs associated with their initial work saying well, contractor B didn't perform by the timeline prescribed and therefore, I had to wait two months to finish the design and therefore, I need "x" numbers of dollars in compensation for that delay. I can guarantee it is going to happen. You probably have already seen it. If you haven't I am surprised. The same thing in construction, somebody has got to be responsibly in charge and oversee the whole thing or you will get hammered to death with increased costs, more so than normal. I can see like in the case of roundabout, assuming the design is done properly that the city could come in with their own crews and probably do it and save some money, but that is when everybody else has left town. A city crew can't be out there working with the construction guys because the construction guys, I can guarantee is going to say well the city got in my way and now you have got a $50,000 increase in cost and they will do it to you every time. Goodell: I apologize I didn't mean to imply that during the design or particularly during the construction process that we want to be in a position where we are making changes to what is going on the ground. The main comment that I wanted to make particularly during design is that we go forward with an idea or whatever it is that we want to do based on concept level costs and if for some reason when we get into the design process, we find that there is some element of the situation that said and I am speaking specifically with respect to city, but also ACHD's features. If we find something that we weren't aware during concept that blows up the cost significantly, we both need off ramps to be able to renegotiate at that point. That is the kind of situation 1 was trying to describe. Certainly we don't want things changing and your point is well taken about how you coordinate construction. McKee: Okay. Goodell: That is all I have. Unless they have additional questions? McKee: Okay, anything else? Item 2. Request to Defer Impact Fees: Freckleton: Good morning Mayor, Commission and Council. My name is Bruce Freckleton and I am the Development Services Manager for the Ciry of Meridian. Just to give you a little bit of background as to how we got here. Approximately two to three months ago, we had some discussions with your staff, ACHD staff regarding our 14 year old agreement for the impact fees cooperative process. There were some things process wise that we wanted to discuss and streamline and work with different methods of those processes and I am happy to say we have checked off a big list and we have come to some terms and it has been a pleasure to work with your staff. Paralleling that process, we had some discussion with our Council and Mayor regarding ways to try and stimulate and incentivize commercial development in Meridian. You may have heard recently that we ~assed a resolution for the waiver of police and fire impact fees from June 3` to September 30"'. It was during those discussions with the development community that when I was vetting this to them, they said that certainly that is a step in the right direction. One of the things that would help them more than anything else would be to try and get impact fees deferred. So we begin the process having some discussion with Gary and your staff to try and explore that option to see if there are ways that we can do that. When I researched your ordinance and also the state statutes regarding the impact fees we didn't see a direct mechanism for the city to enter into any kind of agreement with the District to defer those fees; but we did find that both in state statute and in your ordinance you do have the ability to work with private developers, commercial developers to establish the point and time at which you will collect impact fees and so basically as an introduction what we are asking you to consider deferring your impact fees to the point of occupancy for commercial developments in Meridian. As we have been discussing at staff level we have proposed you would consider it during the same period that we are waiving our impact fees for police and fire and that would be June 3`d to September 30~'. Gary is here too. I don't know if you have anything you want to add? Inselman: Commissioners, Councilmen, I might just add that we have discussed this with our staff internally with our Legal Department and while we agree that our ordinance and statute would give us the ability to enter into these agreements, I am not sure of our ability to enforce them. It does take away some of our protections, I guess you would call it, you know to make sure we collect those fees. We are being a little bit cautious and doing a little bit more research with our Legal Department and certainly look into this further if two bodies direct our staffs to work together. Bruce and I have kind of gone as far as we can at our level and I think it becomes more of a legal issue of can we craft something that gives the District protection. We need to (inaudible) to ensure collection of those fees at that time without the city or Highway District or both pursuing legal action to go and collect those fees if the developing party defaults on the agreement. Having said that normally our protection that we try to ensure that we have in most development deals is a financial guarantee, which if they are putting up the money for the fee, they may as well pay us the fee. There wouldn't be a huge savings so the practical matters of how we can make this work if directed to pursue it, we need to work through. I guess that will be a little more information perhaps a sturdier discussion amongst yourselves and anyone to direct us to proceed. Thanks. McKee: Are there any questions? Zaremba: I probably should know this, but what is the lag between a building permit and an occupancy permit? If we are asking ACHD not to waive payment, but defer it, are we talking about six months or a year? What is the normal lag between those two permits? McKee: Depends on the project Huber: Yeah, I will just go through some of the issues that I see need to be answered that really make me nervous. While in the concept it is great. The reality is and we all know that some developers we are more comfortable than others, but you have to offer it to everybody. I mean, how could we discriminate against one over the other. It would be anybody who asked and that is the first part that bothers me. The collections agency that we talked about -but, more important somebody needs to go through the math with me because if somebody has a $300,000 impact fee and say you defer it for a year and the interest rates - I don't know -it's 5 percent - I have no clue. What I am getting at is -you really are saving them the interest is what you are saving them. So, how does - if that makes or breaks a project, I guess, that is the answer I need and I am not perceiving that it does and it does, maybe it is not a good project anyway. I mean, I am just trying to work through the reality of why you do it and I am perceiving the reason you could waive your fees and I am perceiving that you are waiving is because you really don't need to add any capacity. They are going to handle, during that time whatever comes up anyway because you are not really in the building yet. So you are not -there is no need for any extra. I am just trying -the biggest thing is the financial end of it and does that really make that much difference and for the marginal developer it probably does; for the solid developer it is just maybe a little extra profit. I am just trying to work through all of this risk because I think if we take arisk - if the public takes a risk in business then we should get a bigger payoff. I mean, you always have the higher risk the bigger reward. I know they don't want to pay anymore impact fee at the end of it. Probably don't want to split their profit that we are perceiving to get from the interest. I have a lot of questions where I am just not comfortable. Zaremba: I don't know if I speak for everybody, but my interpretation of what we are doing to waive these fees that we want and why we would ask you to defer some of your fees, isn't necessarily that it would make or break a project. The project either defends itself or it doesn't. What we are hoping to do is accelerate a few projects that weren't going to happen -maybe some developer is saying I am going to put this off until next year or two years from now. What we are hoping it will do is be just enough -some of them will say okay I am going to go ahead and do this this year and stimulate the economy that surrounds that and be more prepared when the economy does come back and like I say, I didn't see it as a method to either break a project, just to accelerate the timing of when somebody would do a project they were going to do anyhow. Baker: Do you see any projects that would fit the parameters that David talked about? Are there ones out there that would be accelerated if we did this? Freckleton: Right off the top of my head I don't think that there is any right in the pipeline. We did have one recently and it wasn't because of this program, but because of our ability to sit down and kind of accelerate some timelines, their plan was to wait until spring of 2010. When we sat down we talked about our timelines and made some commitments to this developer and they are moving forward with that project currently. I think it is just trying to be a little bit more flexible with them and offer some different opportunities to them. If I could get back to the question from Councilman Zaremba it kind of depends on the complexity of the project as to how long it takes. Certainly there are spec projects that we will build and will potentially sit empty for a longer period of time than one that is custom build. It is really a tough question to answer because of the complexity and size of the project and who the tenant is. Baker: I have been asking around about -even before this request came in and talking to some people in the commercial development field and its way down, way, way down. The problem is not - well, I think the problem is financing. There are projects out there that have had financing and have started and have had to have their financing jerked. I think my concern and I agree with Sheny that this is an interesting concept, but my personal concern is that the foregone dollars to the Highway District. I mean we are already looking at having to redo our budget. We cut out a lot of capital projects, a lot of -hopefully not too many maintenance projects, but I mean the only way that I can see this being something I could support is if and you are not going to like this, along with what Gary was saying is if for example, the City of Meridian would indemnify ACHD against any loss that we would not have to go out and sue the developers for those dollars and that you would give us the dollars and then you could sue them. I mean, that is basically the only way and I am sorry, but I just think that the timeframe is so small that it may not amount to anything way because we are looking at three months from today and it would take probably ACHD two weeks or a month to just come up with the parameters of this, which would make it two months. Chances are there is not going to be a lot of projects coming up, but I just think that with the financing situation and the money situation from our revenues is just too iffy. De Weerd: Madame Chair I guess just to answer Sherry's question on does this add any value? And would it -- I guess be incentive enough to move a project into the pipeline and what is the cost? Right now any of our money sitting in any kind of investment is not generating anything. That money lost until from today verses next year is very minimal. The jobs that you create or maybe the projects that would tip a bankers frame of mind in the financing world today, it might be enough. If you have ever had a construction loan, you know you are paying more for the construction in interest than when you make it a permanent -when you transfer it over from construction to occupancy and those kinds of things. There is a savings to the investor, the developer in having a deferral of fees to a later date than starting up front and paying the interest on it that whole time that you carry the construction loan part of it. So there are some advantages on the investor side, but disadvantages is going to be answering that question on occupancy and I think that maybe the city and the Highway District can work together on how to facilitate that. I mean, we can hold occupancy. I just think that those need to be answered by our staffs if they haven't already come up with them already. Huber: But even with that, if we came to that my concern would be and maybe you can legally hold somebody's occupancy because they owe us money, but I would think just right off the bat that is an issue, but I think that we kind of glossed over what I think maybe the answer is -which is if you identify - if somebody comes into you and you identify you really want to help that project in anyway you can - as long as I have sat I have heard them complain about the timelines. You need to tell us hey that is a hot project, get on it and let's figure out how to cut that timeline down to - I mean it is slower, so it is reasonable we could do that because we don't have as many coming at us. So that would be a savings to them -maybe not the same dollar, I am sure it is not, but at least it would be a help that they don't have now trying to really compress that time. De Weerd: I guess they are very interested in the timeline, but I did hear someone make the comment of will you expedite a timeline so I can pay my fees even quicker. Huber: Well, but then they have to also put the pressure on contractor that everybody can do things faster than dragging it out and it is an opportunity for everybody now on timeline Ithink -something that maybe took a year before that somebody can get done in a couple of months or six months or some period of time. Franden: Well, in my mind there is a couple of different issues and one of them is equity and fairness to all who are in the development area. But the other is - I feel really open to it, but I would want other than just a blanket or going out with a hope and a prayer, is to have developer "a", if they really have a project that they want to do and that if the impact fee was modified in someway would really help them get that going -bring that in and let's listen to that and talk about it and see what we can do, if we can make some adjustments or some modifications and if it is possible then we should consider that. Huber: But how do you do -are you drawing the distinction then that only commercial people get this benefit? That if some other developer who is building lots wouldn't get it? I mean, we try so hard for consistency I am not sure really how you can give it to one and not give it to the other and I see Steve scratching his head -equitably, if you were on the other side - I know there is a lot of lots, so you are saying good luck that is probably not going to happen, but whatever the case, you can make a case for a home builder, you could make acase - it s not the money, but it is the concept. What is your basis for not treating them equal, I guess is the question? De Weerd: I guess what we are trying to do is stimulate the economy and the hope and prayer for creation of jobs. Huber: Well, new houses create jobs just as much as -may not be as many but as commercial goes - De Weerd: Well, I mean on occupancy. McKee: I think based on what Sherry said the Commission would have to look at if we gave you this nod, we would have to do it to the entire county. Huber: Somebody needs to tell me what the reason would be for us to give benefit to one group and not another. I think I need to understand that. Price: Madame President, Commissioners and Council, the issue -let me just tell you the legal issue. We have had this in the past and the distinction between certificate of occupancy and a building permit from a highway district's perspective is our leverage for payment is at the building permit. You can't build unless you pay your impact fee. Where it is tricky is that if you condition the payment of impact fee at the certificate of occupancy then you have developed a substantive due process claim. There is a whole bunch of case law that says that if a developer based upon the building permit and he builds and relies upon that and he continues to build then he gets a vested property right and a certificate of occupancy can not deny the ability to occupy because he then has a vested right and so we do lose all of our leverage for the payment of impact fees at that stage. Now, having said that that is just the legal issue, but our impact fee ordinance and statute does allow the timing of the payment and he is correct and there is the possibility of entering into an agreement with the developer or commercial developer that would allow for that to occur based upon some type of conditions. Another fear that you would have is that they would pay the impact fee and they would contest the impact fee, (inaudible) at the end of the project and then you will be embroiled in years of litigation over the calculation of the fee. There are some things that you can do in the agreement to provide that added assurance for the payment. Can you do everything? No. All you would be able to do is limit the risk to the Highway District on the payment. Another distinction from the city's impact fee verses the Highway District's impact fee is that your fees are much smaller. I think it would be fair to say they are in the thousands and ours are in the hundreds of thousands and so the risk is much higher for us do that. Now am I concerned that the Legal Department will have more job security by filing law suits against developers? That is not the intention. We have already received a request today, in fact, ironic timing by Winston Moore over a big development coming to Meridian over a couple hundred thousand in impact fees. If you would like we certainly can work on an agreement with Mr. Moore that would do everything that we could possibly do by bringing it to limit the risk. Happy to do that and that is a big project and that is when he struggled in trying to get into the Meridian community. He has successfully been able to that. We have worked with him in reducing the amount of impact fees by getting within the proper land use category. That is up to you. I just wanted to give you a more direct perspective on the issue from the Legal Department and the things that we can do legally to develop and at least reduce the risk. I don't think we can eliminate it. Huber: Aside from aname - we don't want to use Winston as an example, but in any development. If they get -how will we and maybe this is what you are talking about trying to ensure the risk -how is that we got half way through - because I am kind of thinking of a big commercial development that just seems to me it is going slow -they must have got some money somewhere -how do we make sure that halfway through that their financing is going to go all the way through. We are getting in a role of making an assumption that if we did this - how do we protect ourselves if we did this -forget about the occupancy end, but that something -they have a big changing order or they -how do we ensure that? We have got a big hole downtown that is kind of -keep that name out of it because it has got to be generic? Price: Madame President, Commissioner Huber that is a very difficult issue and you do have to come through with the letter of credit or something like that. But then you have got to check your bank book, but that would be something that we would have to explore more at length and that is a very difficult issue to deal with. We would have to have some form of security. Again, you can't eliminate all of the risks. De Weerd: Madame Chair, you can't eliminate all of the risk, but if the project doesn't happen it neither does the impact. I guess you can see all sides of this, but if the project doesn't happen and that building is not occupied, you don't have an impact on the roads. Just another perspective. McKee: Any other comments or questions? De Weerd: Do you have anything else Bruce? Freckleton: Madame Mayor, Members of the Council and Commissioners, the only thing 1 was going to add is I agree with what your counsel indicated. Certainly I do believe there is case law that makes it a little bit questionable on the occupancy. I have the discussion with our legal counsel and it was their advice that the City of Meridian would also enter into separate agreements with the developer. That agreement would state specifically that occupancy or whatever point of time is agreed upon, would not transpire until the impact fee is paid. This helps to strengthen the case for the District and to payment of that fee. McKee: Okay. Thank you. Item 3. Meridian Split Corridor Phase II: Goodell: Thank you. We wanted to begin a conversation today about the funding of the Meridian split corridor phase 2. When the Commission adopted the downtown plan in 2005 and did get a recommendation from Meridian to make Meridian a main entrance into the split corridor configuration. When that happened our understanding was that the split corridor was somewhere between 3 '/2 to 4 million dollars more than a one way couplet. The motion language was said to direct staff to work with Meridian to begin the implementation of the plan and the split corridor option by creating and proposing innovative ways to schedule and fund the project. We as staff went to our Commissioners last week and said we need your direction on what your thoughts are around this and their response was well let's begin the conversation with the city at the joint meeting. We have had very limited conversations with the city and at this point there hasn't been any specific proposal for cost share -Meridian Development Corporation and the city have not made any specific proposals, nor have we. MDC did fund the landscaping and other features for the phase 1 portion of the split corridor and at this point the project has been a little bit delayed and that is because of the - oh, I am sorry I left one thing out. There was an informal conversation that we had about potential cost share back when we were doing our early right of way acquisition. There was some properties that became available and our right of way folks approached the city about potentially participating in some of that acquisition and the city declined at the time. It was parcel specific conversation. But we really haven't had anything more formal or specific than those little bits and pieces. At this point because of the revenue decline, the split corridor phase has been delayed one year. The corridor phase two construction went from 2012 to 2013 and we have right of way acquisition scheduled for 2011 and 2012. We are in the design process as your staff is well aware. We have our most recent cost estimates and it is approximately - I apologize and I almost have to laugh because I don't really think we have a cost estimate down to $5.30 on the split corridor. I think somebody forgot to round that. But, at this point the difference is somewhere estimated to be $4.7 million range and had we built the couplet verses the split corridor. What we would like to do is ask for the Commissioners and the Council to have the conversation or begin the conversation and give staff some direction on how you would like to see us proceed with the question of funding. McKee: Okay, I will open the floor. (Speaker unknown): Well, Madame Chair in my mind it is important to know what the city wants and we met at our meeting last Wednesday and Sally indicated that the last communication with the city is that you would prefer the split corridor and I wonder if that is still the case or if you had a chance to think about it. Rountree: I guess from my position the decision has already been made. 2005 split corridor. Hopefully that is what you are proceeding with design if you have got projects scheduled and that is what the Commission adopted. To me, that is a moot point. The cost numbers here I think are - I don't know if they -- when they were generated, but I think to make the one way couplet to really work and do it total is probably going to be what is estimated here in proportion to what is estimated in the split corridor. The (inaudible) are numbers and they are not even valid. Zaremba: I think the question I would have is what are the original estimates based on? If they are based on the study that was jointly done by Meridian and ACHD that generated the decision to go for the split corridor and there was some big amounts missing from the one way couplet costs. The one way couplet did not consider what to do with the northeast end and the right of way acquisition that would have to happen if you took out the Albertson's or took out five or six to ten businesses south of Franklin - if you are going to have all of the northbound traffic on Main Street, there needs to be a way to cross that traffic back over to Meridian at some point. Now the split corridor does that south of the railroad track. The estimate that was put into that report for the one way couplet did not answer that question and if you are using that, we all decided at the time that it was not politically possible to even put in writing in that report that one of the options to solving the north end of Main Street was to take out Albertson's. We couldn't put that in there. We also couldn't put in that one of the options would be to take out ten businesses south of Fairview in order to have a cross over that would meet at Cherry and Meridian intersection. So, the cost of actually doing the complete one way couplet - if you are going on the steering committee's report that is not included in there. What I would question is if we are going to make a comparison between the completed project and say here is what the cost difference is, we don't have the completed costs for the one way couplet. The one way couplet would have to include a cross over somewhere that is not included in the cost. Franden: Well, what you are saying David is you have got to have apples and apples and have everything included in there. I know engineering has told us that as far as operational is concerned that the one way couplet and that there isn't a lot of difference between the split corridor and the one way couplet. McKee: Rebecca you had a comment and then Sherry. Arnold: Yeah and I understand that there may be some need to look at the numbers and to really figure out what the real difference in the cost is, but I think it is important for us to talk about the concept of cost sharing here because for me it is no different from aesthetic treatments that the city wants and when we had the conversation and made some decisions three years or so ago, from my perspective it was done on a handshake agreement that the city was going to participate in that incremental cost. I was pretty vocal about that in a couple of meetings and I know the Mayor was not very happy with me over some of the comments I made. But, my position on that hasn't changed and from my perspective if the city wants an aesthetic treatment or a treatment for economic development and both of those things are important to the city and they are part of your mission, I as a Commissioner am certainly willing to work with you to partner on a project and come up with something that works to meet either that aesthetic goal or economic development goal, but the incremental cost for the aesthetics or economic development has to be born by the city. I can't justify to my constituents spending taxpayer transportation dollars for a Ferrari when a good old Chevy will do the same transportation job. We have to have a conversation about the concept of cost sharing on this. Just the same as we did for landscaping and other treatments. Obviously, the numbers may need some refinement, but in the concept we have to have that conversation. Huber: I am going to cut to the bottom line. The reason of what we just had outlined on our cost sharing is so important this is a classic example of why. Now, that wasn't in affect and we know there has been dis-portionate benefits to Boise City over exactly the same issue really. We spent more dollars than what you needed for the road. You can debate that forever. It is done. Now we are here and I can remember the discussions from my perspective on the Commission -yeah, Rebecca's position has stayed consistent. Absolutely. But, I don't believe - I think the decision was made for two. I think that is what we were going forward. The decision was, I think, through the discussion about the difference that occurred. I don't think it was ever resolved and in fact - I can remember even bringing up the same topic that I am now is yeah you are right, it is more, but we have done that before so when do you draw the line? That is why that cost sharing is so important because we do start to draw the line going forward. We are already from my perspective in this, decisions were made, yes we would appreciate some money, but on the other hand you have been the only city that has ever done that - to give some credit. Whether it is on this project or whether it is on the Locust Grove overpass to get something done. So I think it does get into a lot and I think the lesson for us is we should have - we have done the design and if in fact we were that strong, we shouldn't have done the design it was an issue that we have to take some fault for too; I think it is fault that I understand. But, let's get real about it. We did a design based on it and then we come back to you and say cough up; well we should have had discussion as Sally said in the concept design, but we never came to an agreement. We never came to an agreement so we are here. I am just saying let's go forward. The design is done. I believe in our minds that we had hoped -there was some discussion because everybody is tight on money, but that is not the reality of where we are right now in my mind. Bird: I have been involved in hearing on these things since 1998 and I was the one that voted for the Chevrolet. The only one. I never heard anything about the city participating in this. We were given two options -actually three options and that is what we were to vote on to give you guys and idea of where the wanted to go. We have been consistent on our part, but never to my knowledge and I have never missed many meetings, I never heard where the city has offered to kick in money. Now we did on Locust Grove and was happy to. I cannot see us doing that on this. Arnold: Well, you may not have been at the meeting, but I distinctly remember getting chewed on afterwards for being pretty vocal about cost sharing at that time and we did move forward without nailing it down, but in my mind there was a handshake deal that there would be some contribution by the City of Meridian towards that project. (Speaker unknown): Not in mine. McKee: Okay, Charlie and then I am going to make a comment. Rountree: Okay. I too have been involved in this for way too long and seen the city never come forward to support a one way couplet -back in 1998 they didn't support it and the citizens didn't support it and then it went through the study process again and cooperatively done with ACHD and the city hired a consultant to do a downtown master plan, a transportation plan and we ended up with the downtown Meridian transportation plan, which resulted in the preference for the split corridor. I think we both were involved in that process. I guess the caution is that and having worked with these kinds of things for a years is don't - if ACHD is only going to pay for the lowest cost project and I take exceptions that there is (inaudible for the split corridor. It is pretty fundamental. A little more right of way, but it is pretty fundamental cost wise, if you look at construction. It is pretty much the same. There is more right of way with the split corridor, but you can add that to the one way couplet to make it work. (Speaker unknown): The north end Rountree: Yeah. But anyway, I hope you don't take that philosophy with this cost sharing approach because sometimes a better approach if as John says it is correct and I have heard both of these operate about the same, there is a better approach for the community. I mean this went through the process. A lengthy process; an extensive process. This is where we came up. So, to me and it gets the same irritation when somebody comes to us and says well we want to comment and you say well you are going to have to pay for it. Then don't come and ask me. Don't involve me. Come to me with what you are going to do. Don't ask me to spend a lot of money in the community and time and tell people that you know we want to do this downtown, we want the old town to prosper. We spent a little money downtown to try and make it prosper and stimulate the growth down there. Don't do that to anybody, please. If you are going to go into these things in partnerships, understand that you know that the best result might cost a little more. Now, if you wanted Meridian to partner on the cost of this then that should have been in black and white the day we inked a cooperative agreement to do a transportation plan. That is all I have got to say. I appreciate your position because I probably would have been in the same position. I heard it. As opposed to Keith, I heard it. Bird: I heard her say that, but I never heard at any time the city say that they would participate on that cost. Rountree: Just to finish, we have been in this for a long time and you guys have been bringing designs and concepts to us and saying here what do you think? And yeah, we like that and go forth and do good things and it is still nothing has been inked and nothing has been brought up until today, well, what is the partnership going to be? McKee: Charlie I agree with you and I agree with Commissioner Huber. I think that if we were going to do anything about a cost share oh this project, we should have done it back in 2005 when we adopted the split corridor; even before that. Now if the Commission has to do something internally to solve that problem, then that is what we have to do, but it shouldn't be born by anybody else. The split corridor has been in the five year work plan for years now ever since I have been on the Commission. Every year and I have been voting for it and I have not voted for it with an agreement from the City of Meridian that you were going to pay for part of it. I have been voting for it and trying very hard to get it moving forward. So, I have no intention of supporting coming out at this late date and asking you for anything. (Speaker unknown): It has been brought up before. McKee: But we didn't get anything in writing, nothing inked. We didn't do the work that we needed to do as a Commission back in - four or five years ago. Arnold: Well, we won't make that mistake again. We will have it writing McKee: That is what we need to move towards, but we can't go backwards for something that we have worked on even before I remember sitting in those meetings with Dave Wynkoop up there and I never saw so many different corridor choices that you guys had. I sat back there thinking how are they ever going to whittle this down to one? They just went on and on and on. So this is a process that has been going on for years and years and if we were going to do a cost share agreement, we needed to do it way, way before this. David and then Sara. Zaremba: Just from my perspective, the discussion we are having right now does not threaten my support for the cost sharing policy. I view the cost sharing policy as a thing that says if the city wants an embellishment, the city has to pay for it. I can support a policy where we work that out -what embellishment are we willing to pay for and don't expect ACHD to pay for it either in Meridian or in the cities around for embellishments. I mean it is for our protection as for anything else. The distinction I see on this one is I don't see this as an embellishment. I think that if we work out the true cost of the one way couplet, this is actually cheaper. Where we are making the cross over is far cheaper property than you could have done for the cross over for the one way couplet and there has to be a cross over somewhere which was not included in the one way couplet. My feeling about this one is we are actually saving you money. So, that is one of the reasons I would resist kicking in. We need to compare apples to apples. Baker: And that is basically - if the costs are not true, the costs need to be trued up so that this - so we can actually see. But, it sounds to me as if the split corridor is the way too go. So there really is no reason to talk about it anymore. The issue that I thought that was brought to us by Sally at our last meeting was to clarify the costs. We don't have to do that now. Probably should refine the split corridor cost and then just move forward with that as quickly as possible and I do think it needs to be done as quickly as possible. These projects that take and I know it is a function of money, but these projects that take years do nothing to provide support for the community to anybody. It is just so irritating when it is a constant construction zone or it is half done and come back and do the rest later. So, I think that is going to be our task and our test is to get this second phase done as quickly as possible. Huber: Just a follow up. Whatever the cost is they are going to get to the final cost and it is going to relate to the budget and how we juggle the money. Do we have to come back and say hey this is $5 million more than we thought it was going to be just because that is why, so is there a project that you want to cut out to keep this on track? I don't even know if that is the case, but I am just putting out that budgeting numbers and actual numbers in order to keep a project on track is not unusual. We do it all the time and usually if it is a real biggie we will ask, but sometimes we shift around so I am just saying from my perspective I think what has happened here is an example of why people get mad at each other. I think -that is why I early on said we have got to take our hit where I think we deserve it and move on and forget about it. I know the reasons why, so move on. Who cares? Our policies should address it, but that would be my caution that when we look at this and it sounds like there are at least three of us, I am not sure where John is, but saying let's move on and let's get it done, but I am cautioning -where the dollars is -with the budget - I mean that the only caution is - I don't want you guys to be offended or think it is a penalty because we came back and said you know here is where we are with money and we might have to shift and we might not be there, I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me. Because that is why my favorite project keeps getting pushed over your priorities. over mine and that is McMillan and Victory. And that is because you guys have had things you would rather have done. Baker: So the one way couplet is gone? McKee: It has been gone for quite a number of years. (Inaudible discussion) McKee: Okay, on this piece of paper it says that these are current estimated costs for 2009 June, which is now. So are we agreeing with that? You guys went through the numbers and you feel that the two - Zaremba: But that doesn't include a cross over at any place. McKee: Just the split corridor. Goodell: We updated the cost as we do each year so they should be up to date costs and I actually asked Steve that earlier in the conversation and he said Meridian intersection that might require a reconfiguration and we try and take that under consideration and the question that you were asking about the north end - the purpose in providing the dollars is actually - I mean if you want us to go back and refine them and be more accurate we can if that helps the conversation that really - McKee: I just wanted it to mean that these are not five or six year old -that these are current numbers. That is all I care about. Huber: With the impression of what I am talking about -the should have, could have, would have - I don't want it to be blamed on staff either because clearly it goes back to the Commission didn't make it clear and that is our fault. The staff did what they believed right. So, it is on us. De Weerd: Yeah, I know the discussion was had and we all had our opinions and I guess because nothing did happen, we thought a decision was made. But, I would go back to just reiterate what Charlie has stated. If you want to include the public with the process in the decision making that was the recommendation that came forward. And expectations need to be cleared that that is why we support TLIP and it does clear up those expectations and it maybe helps alleviate any future issues like this, but our community is your community too. The public that participated are your constituents as well as ours. So we are doing this for our mutual constituents. It is not us against you or anything like that. We all have a stake and making transportation systems that are efficient and that compliment a community. I think that is what the value of this process was from our perspective and it had a lot of public participation, a huge amount of dialogue and a decision was reached. We appreciate - I tell you to your staff that the comments that we have had on phase one even though it changes the obstacle course almost everyday, they already see the efficiencies and the vision that has been set and there is a great deal of appreciation. So, our hats off in phase one and we look forward to moving forward on phase two where there is a partnership and the TLIP aspects of it and we need to get to what those beyond the basics and let's move forward. McKee: Well said. Any other comments? Okay, staff you understand we are good to go, right? Item 4. Joint Meetings: McKee: Do we need to set the date for the next one or --? De Weerd: Madame Chair I guess I appreciate the as needed basis and there are legitimate reasons to come together, like we have had today - a very important dialogue and we don't want to say joint meetings are not needed because they are. We have enough issues that come up that it is so important that we are on the same sheet and today we reiterated the need for that. McKee: Absolutely. I think we can get - Franden: I agree that when we have something that is substantive and when we really have something to talk about, but we have run into too many incidents not with Meridian necessarily, but over the last few years we meet -and then we get to the point where we are meeting to plan meetings to meet. I have over the years become really quite frustrated at how inefficient government can be with its time, not necessarily its money - De Weerd: But our time. Franden: Everybody's time. We are all too busy. Rountree: I just wanted to comment that I think today's meeting is the kind of meeting that we should have. It was very informative to me and I think we hashed through some issues and hopefully we continue to be able to have these frank and honest dialogues and that is the only way it is going to work. I did want to send a kudos to your staff because last Tuesday night we had a presentation on speed limits, was it not? And going around town the past few days it appears that most if not all of the speed limit changes have been made, there are lots of orange flags around town and I really appreciate the work they did to get there and the expeditious manner they went about getting there. The new speed limits that they have posted. De Weerd: Avery informative presentation too and how we were educated and I will -John we don't put things on this agenda that we can't work out with staff and I appreciate Commissioner McKee's meeting with myself and our staff and Jay to address something where we can deal with things offline. Certainly that is our preference. I think it is only when it needs to be brought up to the Commission level and Council level that we want to have these meetings. McKee: Well, we appreciate that. We have done everything with the Commission to cut our budget and so throwing that out with meetings on a needed basis, they are important, but it also helps our budgeting process and right now we all should be concerned about putting our dollars out there on the ground and doing everything we can and limiting everything we can and so we appreciate your time too. We did get a lot done. (Speaker unknown): I want to throw something out here. Meridian Food Bank talked with members of the Board and thanks to ACHD for that lease of the dollar. That has been a great deal and now the building that has been added has really helped our community greatly and it has been a great location and really do appreciate it. McKee: Well, as the Mayor said your community is our community. We are all in this together and we are very grateful that we could do that. Zaremba: Well I would also chime in on the thanks for the presentations that were made and also just the consistent generosity of the Commission allowing your staff to work with our staff, which they do all year long, everyday and we appreciate that. I have one very minor question, if and when we do have these meetings is Monday the best day for you guys? McKee: Actually Wednesday is the best days. Arnold: Only if they come here. McKee: Yeah, then it would have to be what is the best day for you. De Weerd: Any day is okay. Freckleton: I would like to ask the Board for some direction. At staff level we just kind of need some direction on which way you folks would like to move on that. McKee: We are still in the perplexed stage and we need to have a discussion. We will talk it over with staff and with legal. There are some questions that we have about whether or not we can accommodate you. Rountree: To that point, Madame President, I think there are two things. One you mentioned the possibility of reducing the timeline in terms of - and I think John mentioned the idea of providing some flexibility to developers based on their business plan finances and the kinds of opportunities that you could change the timing of that collection of that permit. That that could be more of a policy or guidance statement in the policy that its there and we can offer -since we are the shop they come to we could offer that to them; we can't defer it but there is an option for you to go and make a presentation to ACHD, give them what it is you are proposing to do and what you are agreeing to do in terms of paying that, but maybe it is an 18 month project, we don't want to pay it when we get a building permit. We want to pay it when we know we have got occupancy to a level that we can open the thing up. McKee: Developers are always welcome to come in and ask us. Our doors are open to anybody who wants to come in and ask the Commission for an acceptance or a variance. De Weerd: Madame Chair our agreement with you is that we will collect it at building permit, so we will need to - if you negotiate something with them, we have to have that within our process too and I think that is why Bruce is asking for clarification. McKee: Keep doing what you are doing and if there is something different then we will let you know. We have to figure that out. De Weerd: We do need to update our agreement and I think we are working on that. Arnold: But that agreement is likely to stay the same on that it would only be maybe if we carve out some exception, it is not going to stay that way forever. I mean -the agreement is really the standard and if we want something different we need to let you know. That will help that process - McKee: All right. Thank you. Item 5. Other: (AUDIO ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) APPROVED: ~~~.n. (Z C~IA.t.~c.l ~OUw~.R' Counul 1.~c~r'c~- \,.~~~y OF M 3~EC SEAL ~,'~ ':~9Q~~t tSt • l~P~~:` `~ / z z / e~`i DATE APPROVED L. HOLMAN, CITY CLERK